Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for September 4, 2008: A 63-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address); call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for September 1, 2008: A 62-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address); call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Friday, August 29, 2008

FIR Interview - Zembly CTO Todd Fast

Sun Microsystems is readying a new online tool that will allow non-programmers to develop social applications in a collaborative manner. Zembly, currently in private beta, will make it easy for those with minimal programming skills to create widgets, Facebook applications, and other tools that can support communication and marketing objectives. Zembly’s CTO, Todd Fast, discusses the project and how communicators might use it.

Todd Fast is the architect and CTO of zembly.com, a service of Sun Microsystems. Zembly is the world’s first cloud-based social application development tool, with which users can create applications for Facebook, OpenSocial, Meebo, and more using a browser and their creativity.

Most recently, Todd was Chief Architect for enterprise Java tools at Sun Microsystems, and lead architect for the NetBeans IDE in the area of SOA/Web services and XML. He also designed and built the world’s first
commercial IDE features for real-time developer collaboration.

Before Sun, Todd held positions as Principal Consultant and Engineer with NetDynamics, where he developed application server runtimes and architected large e-commerce sites for Fortune 500 companies..

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address); call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the twice-weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

The Hobson and Holtz Report - Podcast #375: August 28, 2008

Content summary: PR Week blog contest update; brief discussion of FIR interview with Maggie Fox and Geoff Livingston; discussion of Jason Calacanis’ post about do-it-yourself PR for startup CEOs who should fire their PR agencies; the Media Monitoring Minute from CustomScoop; Dan York’s report and a follow-up discussion about the state of Technorati; the music from Amy MacDonald; and more.

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for August 28, 2008: A 64-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address); call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

FIR Interview - Maggie Fox and Geoff Livingston, Part 2

Maggie Fox and Geoff Livingston announced today that the previously announced acquisition of Livingston Communications by The Social Media Group will not be moving forward. In this brief interview, they address the reasons for calling off the deal and their approach to communicating the decision.

Maggie Fox is the founder of Social Media Group, specializing in social media consulting from its base on Ontario, Canada. Geoff Livingston is founder of Livingston Communications, focusing on social media consulting from Washington, D.C. More detailed biographies are available from our last interview.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address); call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the twice-weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for August 25, 2008: A 63-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address); call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Live call-in show postponed to September 20

Due to Shel’s inability to keep his calendar up to date, a scheduling conflict is pushing back the live call-in show to Saturday, September 20. Sorry about that. Times are the same—10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. London. Topic is the same, too: We’ll discuss the question raised on the blog eGov.au: “I’ve often wondered about the strength of the relationship between an organisation’s commitment to internal communications and its commitment to an effective intranet. I have worked in organisations with strong internal comms cultures, but with very poor intranets.” The post came to our attention courtesy of Michael Vanderdonk.

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